Time Traveler's Wife

Even before the book The Time Traveler's Wife was made into a movie, I had added it to my Amazon Wish-List because it turns up in Best of Sci-Fi lists. So when the movie came out, I wanted to read the book before seeing it on the (big/small) screen. I finished the book about a week ago and watched the DVD only a couple of nights ago.

For a first novel, I think, Audrey Niffenegger's writing style in this book is damn good. It is quite a page-turner; or perhaps, I think that way because I like time-travel stories. The title could have been "The Time Traveler and his wife." That would have been more apt as the author shifts the role of the narrator in almost every chapter. She does not dwell too much in the how aspects of the time travel, which is good. Instead, the story moves along with Clare's time, and obviously, jumps back and forth in Henry's time. Her use of the couple's ages in the section headings is useful in the narration and understanding of the events. She is not afraid to let the reader in on the big events early in the book and then fill in the details later. While that would be an anti-climax in a mystery, she is able to pull it off in this story because the time travel twists (ie: how the participants got there) are much more interesting than the end results themselves.

She doesn't use the message-passing techniques between times (ie: Doc Brown sending a letter to Marty McFly from the past in the movie Back to the Future III) or leaving things behind where you can later/earlier find them (ie: in the movie Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, they look for the keys behind a sign knowing that they are going to go back and leave the keys there later on) all that much. Instead, she relies mostly on people's memories and recollections. After all, this is a romance novel as well and, I suppose, memories are more important in such a book. {grin} A sci-fi stickler would argue about the author's claim that the time travellers aren't able to change the future (or past in their case) events and then she herself using such things when convenient. But, since the whole idea of the time travel requires a huge leap of faith, you tend to go along with the pre-conditions set by the author.

Now on to the movie, which I thought was surprisingly close to the book. They had to cut quite a lot of details from the book's version of the story in order to fit it into the movie-legnth. I think, someone who only sees the movie isn't getting his money's worth. In the movie there's not much interaction between the couple and their friends and families; some important characters are completely gone (Kimy and Ben). Overall the movie was okay, but I liked the book a whole lot more. The casting was spot on, specially for Clare's and Henry's roles. Had I not read the book first, I think, the movie would have been too confusing for me. There are some instances where the movie doesn't explain what's going on all that well (ie: the wedding -- okay, that's not a spoiler for anyone since you know she is the wife ... the title says so. :-)).

One quibble I have with the the book is the author's use of PG-13/R rated language at times and R-rated scene descriptions. I don't read trashy romance novels, so perhaps, that's a requirement in that genre, but for the sci-fi genre, I could've done without those. (Sci-Fi greats like Clarke and Asimov didn't have to resort to crudeness to write great stories.)

Overall, a great book! Movie? Meh, read the book first.